There’s an interesting online social community dedicated to financial news that has quickly become a familiar name and location for personal finance bloggers to visit. A lot of my blogging friends use it often as a place to find high quality financial information and articles to enjoy and learn from.
Tip’d.com joins several other financial web resources out there such as those I’ve mentioned in previous articles. And of all the sites out there, Tip’d reminds me most of PF Buzz: at first glance, both these sites appear to have similar features and goals.
I first heard of Tip’d when I was contacted by its community directory, Muhammad Saleem, who shared with me their philosophy:
Social news in the traditional format (like Digg) has too broad a focus to do justice to any specific niche. Given the political and economic climate, and people’s renewed interest in the finance sector (as well as personal finance) we think now is the perfect time to launch Tip’d, a social news site focused specifically on the business and finance vertical. Also given how Digg is moving forward, we feel that it will be in the publishers’ best interest to diversify their social news traffic sources, and Tip’d would be a great place to start for any industry site for that long-term, targeted traffic.
A quick check of the site and its profile reveals that it is backed by a strong team of entrepreneurs and experienced social media marketers, among them Andy Hagans and Mu Saleem. If you look closely, you’ll also notice that a familiar personal finance blogger is part of the team — Jim Wang of Blueprint for Financial Prosperity.
Here’s how Tip’d works: anyone can submit financial articles and news that they deem interesting enough to attract votes and trigger discussion, much like what you see in Digg. Users submit an article which picks up votes when people click the “Tip It” button. Users can share their comments by clicking the “Discussion” link under each submission. All sounds familiar? It’s the same mechanism you’ll see in most social news sites. With this intuitive interface, it should be pretty straightforward for anyone to become part of the Tip’d community.
As you’d expect, Tip’d has been described as a more targeted “vertical” Digg that’s dedicated to focused categories like investing, personal finance, business and real estate. I do think it’s interesting that several such online sites now exist that embody this premise, but it remains to be seen which one (or few) will take the ball and run with it. A social site will require critical mass to gain visibility and develop its community but given that Tip’d has the experience of top Diggers, SEO masters, social media experts and the solid support of personal finance sites behind it, I’d expect it to do very well in the social media realm.
A Look At Tip’d Features
Now how about a tour of the site? The guys there have worked hard to get Tip’d growing at a great pace. They’ve got some useful features which I’d like to go over with you:
1. Tip’d SocialTickers
Okay, this is cool. If you’ve got a ticker symbol you’re tracking, you’ll get a fresh perspective when you check out Tipd’s stock ticker list. If you want to investigate something like AIG (harumph!), then take a look at AIG’s SocialTicker page. A SocialTicker page incorporates the most recent Tip’d stories, blog posts, bookmarks, tweets and resources that pertain to a particular stock symbol. Thus, if you want to get the buzz and the latest “dirt” on something, you can do so via Tip’d!
2. Tip’d Videos
Tip’d now supports the submission of financial and business videos. You can now submit, share and watch videos through Tip’d just as easily as you can any other regular article. When you click on a thumbnail you see on the video page, a pop up will appear and play the show for you.
Image by Robert Young
3. Who’s in the Top 100? Top Community Members
Tip’d acknowledges those who’ve been active contributors and members of their site. They have the Top 100 domains page, which shows you those folks who have participated in Tip’d in a big way. I see a lot of familiar names in the list for sure (sad to say, we aren’t in it)! I need to get moving on using Tip’d more often so I can make that page!
In addition, Tip’d includes a Top Ambassadors page to list those who have been active recruiters of new members for the community, and a Greatest Hits page which highlights the most popular articles ever featured on the Tip’d homepage.
After seeing this thriving community, yes, I feel guilty that I haven’t been a more active member at Tip’d. I’m hoping I can change my ways, but have been facing a serious time crunch for some time now. But based on the developments I’m seeing, I think that I really should get into the social networking scene more, huh?
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{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
Tipd.com is a great growing finance community that I recommend everybody to join. As they can gain a lot of valuable information from the quality content that is submitted within the community by its users.
I’ve only visited Tip’d a few times, but I certainly like what I see. As you say, they have put together a talented team and I expect good things from them.
When the cost to participate is nil, I don’t see why someone wouldn’t give it a try, you know? I was particularly impressed with the team when I was first introduced to it, it has a lot of internet veterans.
I want to join this to build the community. I think community is very important in the online world.
This is a great community! I have really enjoyed being able to use this community. They are really easy to use and provide you with all of the financial sites, including sites that are not related to financial markets.
It seems as this is going to be a new competitive market in the social networking industry: personal finance communities and other niche social networks. Will definately help advertisers target their audiences, I am currently evaluating tip’d as I have been a huge advocate for pfbuzz the past few months.
There were some neat articles on the Tip’d site, thanks for sharing. It is cool to see the social media aspect being embraced and expanded upon in more and more niches. Really, I get a large part of my news through social sites and it is always nice to find a new one!
Thanks for tipping me off about this new site. I will have to check it out.
Thanks for pointing them out. I’ll go give it a look see.
Makes sense to target the financial niche. I wasn’t aware of Tip’d and will definitely review their site.
This looks like it could be a winner because there’s actually some decent content on there. It certainly has to be better than Digg and Propeller which have only ever sent me a trickle of visitors.
I’ve been a user of Tip’d, but not sure that I’ve noticed anything “2.0″ yet – and I’m not on the Top 100 users list (yet), either. I think it’s pretty hectic for us to feel we have to keep keeping up with all the new “social” networking changes. They’re just going to start happening too fast – I might even say soon we’re going to be in a big “social networking bubble” that’s about to pop. The video going around about “Flutter” – a mockumentary about a Twitter parody is a great case in point – it’s pretty funny too, you should check it out.
(I just wanted to quickly say, too, that I’m going to be hosting the new Carnival of Cashflow Consciousness – for any pf bloggers who might be interested, email me your articles on any topics relating to investing for more income and cashflow, etc.)
I’ve found many good articles on Tip’d. Another good spot for business news is socialnews.biz.
On June 21, 2012, Tip’d bid the personal finance space adieu.